Magic
For the Element of Harmony, see the appropriate section of the Elements of Harmony article. My Little Pony Friendship is Magic possesses many fantasy elements, a prominent one being the use of magic by the ponies and by other creatures. Earth ponies Throughout the show, earth ponies are seen growing crops and caring to plants and animals, particularly in Winter Wrap Up and Fall Weather Friends. The show's creator explained online that earth ponies have a special connection to the earth, and its plants and animals. Fluttershy, a pegasus whose special talent is working with animals, is something of an exception to the rule in this regard. Pegasus ponies Pegasus ponies frequently alter the weather, notably in the first episode and Winter Wrap Up where pegasus ponies clear the clouds from the sky, and in Look Before You Sleep where they build up clouds to arrange a storm. Snowflakes and rainbows are made in a pegasus-run weather factory in Cloudsdale that the main characters visit in the episode Sonic Rainboom. Related to their weather-manipulation abilities is their ability to walk on clouds. Other ponies require a magic spell to be able to walk on clouds, as Twilight explains in the episode Sonic Rainboom, while pegasus ponies possess this ability naturally. Gilda, a griffon, has no trouble walking on clouds in Griffon the Brush Off. There are some instances of non-pegasus background ponies walking on clouds during The Cutie Mark Chronicles and Sonic Rainboom, which are explained as animation errors by one of the show's layout artists. Some pegasus ponies create weather-related wakes when they perform aerial acrobatics. Rainbow Dash creates rainbows several times during her acrobatic flights, and creates a special burst called sonic rainboom on two occasions in the episodes Sonic Rainboom and The Cutie Mark Chronicles. In Lesson Zero she created an explosion so powerful it left a rainbow-colored mushroom cloud. Other pegasus ponies, like The Wonderbolts, leave wakes of clouds or smoke. Unicorn ponies exerting herself to manipulate large objects with telekinesis.]] Lauren Faust has stated that the earth and pegasus pony races possess subtler types of magic, which allows pegasi to walk on clouds for example, but unicorns are unique in their ability to actively perform magic. Throughout the show, unicorn ponies use their horns to perform various magical acts. Most commonly, they are shown manipulating objects through telekinesis. The colors of magic Objects affected by the unicorn magic are usually surrounded by a glow the color of the unicorn's eyes, as are their horns. For the first season, Rarity's and Trixie's glows are light blue and purple, respectively. The color of the glow of incidental characters' magic is not consistent in this way and frequently differs from their eye color, which is the case with the exam supervisors and the waiters in The Cutie Mark Chronicles, for example. Twilight Sparkle and Princess Celestia are exceptions as far as recurring characters go. The color of Twilight's glow is inconsistent in the first season and more consistent in the second. Similarly, whereas the color of Celestia's magical glow varies throughout season one, the glow is yellow in Lesson Zero, and the addition of a yellow glow to her magic is one of the changes to the new opening titles. Rarity Rarity possesses a gem-finding spell in addition to the standard telekinesis, which occurs for the first time out of her control in a flashback in The Cutie Mark Chronicles. She's adept enough with telekinesis to manipulate many objects at once when making dresses, and uses a spell to turn regular canopy into topiary in Look Before You Sleep. She creates a colorful light show and intricate backdrops for her second fashion show in Suited for Success. Twilight Sparkle {C Twilight is exceptional in regard to magic, having dedicated herself to studying the art. Spike mentions in Boast Busters that Twilight's magical ability is exemplary, and Princess Celestia comments about Twilight's enormous raw magical power in The Cutie Mark Chronicles. Unicorn magic requires concentration and effort, as Twilight explains to Spike at the beginning of Feeling Pinkie Keen and to the Cutie Mark Crusaders in Call of the Cutie, and in Lesson Zero she says she needs a line of sight with an object to undo the spell she cast on it. When Twilight levitates the ursa minor in Boast Busters, she is visibly exerting herself, gritting her teeth and tensing her muscles, however she effortlessly harvests an entire apple orchard at once in Applebuck Season. Twilight is shown developing her skills in a flashback in The Cutie Mark Chronicles, where she has some difficulty using magic to turn a page in her book; the scene shows her progressing in her studies, a theme which continues throughout the series. Snails, similarly, shows some difficulty performing a horn-light magic in Boast Busters, and doesn't demonstrate Twilight's developed magic ability. As talented as she is, her spells occasionally misfire or fail. When she casts a spell on the parasprites in Swarm of the Century so they won't eat food, they begin to consume items which aren't food, and subsequently destroy Ponyville. When she tries to assist with Winter Wrap Up by making a plow run itself with a "come-to-life" spell, she ends up losing control of the plow and sending Applejack hurtling in a ball of snow into the side of a hill, and the impact covers the recently-plowed field with snow once again. She tries to reverse Discord's strange effects with a "failsafe spell" which Twilight says will "fix everything"... but it fails. A "want it, need it" spell on the doll Smarty Pants in Lesson Zero works a little too well, as it affects more than her intended targets and she's unable to undo her mistake. Twilight possesses the ability to teleport, which was also common among previous-generation My Little Pony unicorn characters. The ability is first shown in Friendship is Magic, part 2 when she charges Night Mare Moon and disappears only to reappear behind Night Mare and next to the Elements of Harmony. She teleports short distances in Applebuck Season to get ahead of Applejack trying to confront her about her over-exertion, and she unintentionally teleports with Spike from the thoroughfare into her library in The Ticket Master, which leaves Spike slightly singed. She teleports multiple times in Lesson Zero, seemingly without effort. Twilight uses various other spells, among them: *Turning rocks into formal attire in Feeling Pinkie Keen. *Sensing gems in A Dog and Pony Show by "copying" Rarity's spell. *Allowing non-pegasus ponies to walk on clouds and possess temporary wings in Sonic Rainboom. *Hatch a dragon from its egg in The Cutie Mark Chronicles. *Fleetingly making cutie marks appear on Apple Bloom's flank in Call of the Cutie. *"Number 16", which Twilight uses in Boast Busters to make the wind blow through river reeds. *Growing facial hair on Spike, Snips, and Snails in Boast Busters. *Making ponies desire her doll Smarty Pants with a "want it, need it" spell in Lesson Zero. In the first season, Twilight's horn usually glows white or a faint shade of purple, and objects assume a glow of white, purple, or magenta; when she affects multiple objects as once, several other colors are used as well, for example in the gem finding scene in A Dog and Pony Show. Starting with the second season's third episode, Twilight's magic is uniformly depicted using a bright magenta. Trixie Trixie performs various parlor tricks in Boast Busters: manipulating rope, creating fireworks and light displays, turning Rarity's hair green, and making a cloud strike Rainbow Dash with lightning. Princess Celestia and Princess Luna {C The princesses are called "unicorns" in prologue of the show's first episode. Unlike regular unicorns, they possess wings and the ability to raise the sun and the moon. In The Cutie Mark Chronicles, Twilight witnesses the Summer Sun Celebration with Princess Celestia raising the sun; the narration in the prologue of Friendship is Magic, part 1 states that Celestia banished Luna in the moon and took her place, raising both the sun and the moon and maintaining harmony. When the ponies are summoned by Princess Celestia in The Return of Harmony Part 1, she tells them that she and her sister once used the Elements of Harmony to turn Discord into stone, and since the princesses are "no longer connected to the Elements", Discord has managed to escape. She continues, saying the Elements of Harmony are stored in a magically sealed room that only she can open–however, they turn up missing, and Discord appears, telling the ponies a riddle which discloses the Elements' location. Princess Celestia undoes Twilight Sparkle's magic twice in the series: once in The Cutie Mark Chronicles, where she calms Twilight, making her out-of-control magic revert to normal; and again in Lesson Zero, where Celestia directly uses her magic to undo the "want it need it" spell cast by Twilight. Discord Celestia tells the ponies that before she and her sister usurped Discord, he made ponies miserable by causing chaos everywhere. Once he is freed, strange things happen, such as cotton-candy clouds raining chocolate milk, roads turning into soapy water, giant pepper shakers float in the air, bunnies grow long, lanky limbs, and more. Discord apparently steals the Elements of Harmony from Celestia's magical safe, which she believes only she can open. He makes the ponies behave the opposite of how they normally would, a spell which Twilight breaks by using a "memory" spell to restore the ponies' friendship. Eventually he is encased in stone again through the power of the Elements of Harmony. The Elements of Harmony The Elements of Harmony are said to be the strongest magic known to ponydom in the series' first episode's prologue. They are introduced in the first episode when Twilight reads about them in her book. It's told that they were used by Princess Celestia to banish Night Mare Moon to the moon to prevent her from plunging Equestria into eternal night. They are later used by Twilight and her friends to turn Night Mare Moon back into Princess Luna, and again to encase Discord in stone. The elements themselves are pieces of jewelery that match each of the main six ponies' cutie marks. Magical plants Zecora practices a magic using plants in various episodes. She cures the effects of the poison joke with a herbal bath in Bridle Gossip, and cures Apple Bloom's Heart's Desire-induced cutie pox with The Seeds of Truth in the episode The Cutie Pox. In the same episode, she cures Apple Bloom's chipped tooth, and mentions curing a rooster who's lost his crow. Magical creatures *A cockatrice can turn living creatures into stone by staring into its victim's eyes, as observed in Stare Master. *Princess Celestia's pet Philomeena, as a phoenix, can rise from its dead ashes, which it promptly does during A Bird in the Hoof. *Throughout the series, Spike teleports scrolls, letters, and other objects, using his fire breath. *Gilda walks on clouds in Griffon the Brush-Off, much like the pegasus ponies. In May the Best Pet Win! other winged creatures walk on clouds, too. : References